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glitched-dawn · 1 month

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So I have noticed some cool grimblos do in fact notice that I have written funny words and want to read them so uhhh

Imma just post the first chapter here?

Aight here we go: Novel 1 out of 9, Breached Containment, Chapter one: How haven't I seen this cool thing before?

[Warning tho it is really long like 20 A5 pages]

[Also PS if this gets over 100 notes I'll post chapter two]

How haven’t I seen this cool thing before?

Soon I’d literally die from boredom. No offense to my teacher, but since I was used to having biology lessons indoors, maybe doing an experiment or two, this was just a punishment. Walking around in the woods, that I knew inside out, looking for anomalies in fungi.

But this day turned out to be something unusual - something unusual, cool, and potentially, bad.

☙•❧

Me and my friend Rick left our class’s search for mushrooms pretty early (cause who could be interested in mushrooms when they’d already explored almost the entire forest?), and we had special permission to leave and “explore”, which was weird, since we got permission because we knew the forest inside out.

We’d left the school about ten minutes ago, and most of us were enjoying the warm and fresh air. Others (ehm, those who didn’t know forests exist) were just staring at their phones, waiting for the lesson to be over.

Two of our teachers were there with us, our PE and - of course - biology teacher. Our PE teacher, Mr Raminez, a buff bald dude with a blonde beard wearing coaching clothes, walked around trying to push us into doing healthy exercises. And our biology teacher, Brian (he’s such a homie, everybody just calls him Brian), mainly just mingled with students about their grades, about fun and lean lessons he’d have in the future, and about potential future trips like this one, hopefully not in the local forest.

Rick and I didn’t have much to do, except maybe finding a good tree to climb, or maybe doing the exercises Raminez wanted us to do. But since we knew the forest here inside out, there wasn’t anything fun we could do during the trip, if we didn’t sneak away.

I sighed and looked around. The dense forest had all kinds of different trees - it wasn’t just a boring pine one, or a birch one, so on. There was both pine and birch, there were mighty old oaks, clusters of rowan and juniper, and spots with fir and beech. And the whole place was filled with life, even though you couldn’t see it directly.

Squirrels were easy to spot, they didn’t care about being hidden. Then the frogs were everywhere, so that wasn’t a surprise, and you were heavenly lucky if you caught a deer or fox. Unluckily, since there was so much passive wildlife, there were also many predators, like wolves, bears and wolverines, and also the biggest moose I’d ever seen in any forest throughout my life.

I remembered one time, when I was out in my backyard, there was a moose munching on our apples. I ran to my dad, who grabbed his rifle and shot it, because we wouldn’t risk the moose hurting anyone. I hadn’t understood why until later, when Dad told me that a portion of the apples were fermented. The moose tasted good though, and we got to hang its antlers over the fireplace in the living room, which was extremely cool.

Rick shook my shoulders, making me wake up from my zone-out.

‘Oh, what is it?’ I asked him.

‘There’s a gap’, he announced, and I grinned. It was time for some exercise.

☙•❧

As the other students in our class stood bent over one of the most common mushrooms in the forest, that I’d seen at least a couple hundred times, Rick and I took our chance and threw ourselves away from the others in hopes that the teachers would assume that we’d just gone for a quick detour - when in reality, we were running as fast as we could away from the class to gain some free time.

We ran for a few more minutes, until we had to stop so I wouldn’t choke on my laughter.

‘Bro, they didn’t even notice!’ I laughed, stumbling backwards. I hit a tree and leaned against it, to give me something to hold on to as I tried to sip air. Rick was out of breath too, laughing at me.

‘Couldn’t they hear what was happening? Like seriously, we almost threw ourselves down that cliff!’ I fell forwards, and Rick caught me at the last second. I struggled to stand up and I fell again, causing Rick to cough, he was laughing so hard.

When I had finally gotten up and brushed myself off, and when our laughter had subsided somewhat, we took off through the forest again - through shrubbery, glades and brushwood, over fallen trees and narrow streams. It was cloudless and warm outside, and the sun shone in rays through the beautiful arched roof of fresh green leaves. It wasn’t very windy, the most noticeable sound was us walking on leaves and pine needles, and the birds and other animals going about in the distance.

We walked casually, safe and sound, in the direction of the old limestone quarry, where we could take a fresh dip later today. It wasn’t that popular, with the ocean so close by, so we usually had it for ourselves.

But we must’ve walked in a somewhat wrong direction, and we walked for a good fifteen minutes before I realized. I interrupted Rick in the middle of his epic, overly dramatic story about how he beat me in Castle Crashers for the first time (he got to use my most powerful character, and he didn’t let me heal. Sounds unfair to me).

‘Hey, bro, I think we went in the wrong direction’, I cut him off. He stared at me in confusion. Then his eyes lit up in excitement.

‘Well, that doesn’t matter now’, he said quirkily, ‘cause I’ve found something way more interesting!’ He turned around and started running away from me, through a glade filled with thicket, and past a wall of trees.

‘Oh woah, take a look at this, bro!’ Rick shouted to me. I followed up and when I reached Rick, I wasn’t very surprised.

’What? I thought I’d shown you the ravine before’, I said, confused. In front of us, a rip in the earth cut through the dirt and rock below. On the other side of the ravine, there were more coniferous trees than on this side. That place looked pretty dark, and I hadn’t spent much time there. In the bottom of the rave, a small river snaked through the rubble and boulders. It wasn’t really a ravine, it was more of a canyon, but whatever.

Rick frowned and answered; ‘Yeah, yeah, you have, but that’s not what I was talking about-’ he turned around and pointed at something at the line of the horizon -’my bro, you goin’ blind? There’s a building over there!’ I squinted at the spot Rick was pointing at and saw a gray block, and it did look like some sort of building. I regretted not having explored the forest past the ravine.

‘Ey, that’s epic!’ I responded with a smile, ‘But I don’t think we have the time to go get your binoculars.’ Rick nodded.

‘That’s true. And sneaking past the teachers and the other students would be harder than before’, he summed up. I glanced at the building again - it was hard to see what kind of building it could be; but it was easy to foreclose. It obviously wasn’t a normal house you’d live in, not even an apartment building. Maybe it was just an abnormally huge abandoned house, but from the shape and gray color I doubted it; it looked more like concrete, and not many abandoned houses in the forest were made out of concrete.

‘What do you think it is?’ I asked Rick. He squinted at the block just like I did, frowning.

‘It’s pretty hard to tell from this angle and distance, I should really bring my binoculars tomorrow. But it can’t be a normal house - I’d say that it’s an abandoned factory or something.’ Yeah, that made some sense, but why would it be out in the middle of the forest?

‘Yeah. That’s neat, though. You think we can check it out tomorrow?’ I looked back at Rick. He caught my gaze and smiled quirkily.

‘Time for some urban exploring’, he grinned.

☙•❧

‘I’m home!’ I yelled into the quiet house.

Huh, that’s weird, I thought to myself. There was usually quite a bit of noise here, even when I wasn’t home.

I looked around the empty space. The wooden walls were coloured a light brown, tainted gray. Past the narrow hall I was standing in was the living room, and to my right was the kitchen. To my left were the stairs up to the master bedroom and my room, plus a soundproof room, a little common room and a bathroom.

I heard someone getting up from bed upstairs, and a few moments later my dad came stumbling down the stairs - an averagely tall dude, with mixed ginger-brown, fluffy hair, dressed in an orange flannel shirt and a pair of ripped jeans.

‘Hey buddy! How was school today? I heard you went on a trip to the forest’, he said brightly.

His sky-blue eyes glittered friendly, and his warm smile was extremely contagious. People often told me I looked similar to him, probably because we were both tall, had the same bushy brown hair and lanky posture, but he had many many more laugh lines than me, blue eyes, lighter skin and a warmer face. I had energetic green eyes, a crooked smile, a browner, more coffee-colored hue, and a few faded freckles around my nose. If I’d just been a little taller, we’d almost look like we were the same age. It was magical how he managed to look like an older teen, when he really was 39.

I smiled back and responded; ‘Oh, yeah! Rick and I got a special permission to leave and explore, which is really weird since we’ve already explored a really big part of the forest’, I told him while taking off my shoes and backpack.

‘We did go exploring though, we walked all the way to the ravine and spotted some kind of building on the other side of it. We plan to go see what it is tomorrow - on a distance, of course, with Rick’s binoculars.’ I walked into the kitchen and grabbed two mugs from one of the cabinets. Dad followed me into the kitchen.

‘Oh, by the way, my buddies from work invited me for a fishing trip tomorrow, but we’ll be home by the evening’, he said, grabbing some milk out the fridge, putting it on the counter, and then he grabbed the sugar and cocoa from the pantry.

‘You want some hot chocolate?’ He smiled.

‘Yeah, sure!’ I replied. I got up from my chair and helped him prepare - I put a small saucepan on the stove, and I turned the heat up. As Dad started to cook the heavenly drink, I told him about my day and what plans I had for today. He nodded along, listening, smiling encouragingly.

‘Where are you going, though? The ocean? Along the coast, or out in the big blue?’ Dad nodded.

‘Yep, we’re going fishing in the ocean, out in the endless bright blue! It’s gonna be lit, and my buddies are even going to bring a barbeque with them on the boat!’ I grinned. That sounded awesome!

‘I hope you catch some fish for me’, I said, and Dad smiled back, nodding again.

It was wonderful how happy he still was, considering he’d lost his wife - my mum - just a few years ago. She’d died in a terrorist bombing in a large city we’d lived in, and from there we had moved to EverNought afterwards to be able to healthily deal with the trauma. She’d saved many lives that day, and I was proud of her. She’d been an amazing mom.

Our family were atheists, but we were always grateful for nature and believed in its spirit. My mum had always prayed with us before bed, more for fun and giggles, singing fast-paced little tales as she tickled us and clapped her hands. We’d stopped after her passing, as it was her own thing, and it was kind of down-feeling to have a memory like that bringing longing and sadness every night.

My dad often said, “As long as we have each other, there’ll be no need to cry, and if you cry, you’ll always have someone to cheer you up.” And that was true, and really comforting. He was a very light dude, after all, and he had a good life. Two kids, a good house and a well-paying job, not to talk about the beautiful environment. The huge, mixed forest is astounding, and the small town is cozy and overall pretty nice. And about his two kids…

‘Hey, by the way, where’s Samantha?’ I asked Dad. He turned around and took the saucepan with him, still stirring.

‘Oh, she’s out on a date with someone. I don’t remember his name, but he seemed decent. Or she’s out with her friends, it’s hard to keep track of her’, he chuckled. Wait, what? My whiny, slightly bratty little sister had gotten a date?

‘Nah, you’re kidding’, I said. Dad laughed again, and he almost couldn’t stop.

‘No, for real! I wonder how, though. She hasn’t really worked on her manners’, he grinned. ‘She’s a bit ahead of you, eh?’ I gasped and dramatically put my hand over my chest, and now Dad had to put the saucepan down again, he was laughing so hard.

‘You dare insult my fabulous singularity! Absolutely flabbergasted!’ I exclaimed with a grin. We laughed for a long while, and it was hard to stop since we just laughed harder every time we looked at each other again. But finally, when we’d managed to keep calm for approximately three seconds, Dad approached me and patted me on my shoulder.

‘You know I won’t force you to love, right? That’s something you choose yourself, buddy. It’s not my business, and you’re safe to love whoever you want! Sorry if I haven’t told you before.’ I hugged him and responded; ‘No, you’ve told me before. You’re safe to love whoever you want too.’ Dad hugged me back.

‘That’s right’, he replied, smiling. Then he let go and hurried to the stove - we’d both forgotten the hot chocolate. A few minutes later, Dad grabbed a pad and brought the saucepan to the dining table.

‘You up for some steaming hot liquid heaven?’ He asked triumphantly - not only a lit dad, also an amazing cook - as he showed me how he’d managed to avoid burning the cocoa into the bottom of the pan. As he talked, I grabbed the mugs and Dad poured in the cocoa. I took a sip, and… wow.

‘Woah. That’s amazing’, I managed to say before gulping down almost the entire thing. Dad smiled and sipped his slowly and calmly.

‘I’m surprised it turned out so good even though I forgot to stir for a while’, he said contentedly.

‘Is it okay if I bring some for me and Rick’s exploration adventure tomorrow? This cocoa is honestly better than heavenly! Though, I feel like we’re using that term a bit too much considering that we don’t believe in God and that stuff’, I figured. Dad smirked and said, ‘All hail the hot chocolate!’ while raising his mug. I burst into laughter and was relieved I wasn’t drinking at the moment.

I’m happy Dad doesn’t get irritated by my almost-constant laughter, at least. Dealing with my energy though, that was somewhat worse. Thinking about it, I should probably talk more about it with Dad. But not this second, I thought, when I heard someone unlocking the door.

‘That must be Samantha’, Dad said, getting up to welcome her in.

‘Okay, uh, I’m just gonna…’ I wanted to avoid more teasing - because of course my little sister took every chance to make herself feel better than me - so I got up and quickly swept around the corner of the hall into the living room, then I bolted to the door leading to our backyard, opened it and rushed out into the forest in a split second.

Great placing of the house, I thought to myself. Free activity whenever I felt like it.

Somewhere to spend all my overflowing energy and avoid annoying siblings.

Somewhere to feel a little more peace and quiet.

☙•❧

I run out into the woods regularly, so I didn’t have to worry about Dad wondering where I’d gone. It was no problem - and it was easier to spend time in the forest than in my room. Sure, my room was big and I had loads of stuff I could use to pass time with, but there were no walls in the forest - not any boundaries for my energy.

Plus, I wanted to go to the ravine and see if there was a way over without needing rope or other equipment. So I started making my way through the forest, and I realized that I should have brought a flashlight. It must’ve been quite some time past noon - the sun almost almost touched the treetops. Well, it is what it is. I just had to make it back before six, or else I’d miss dinner.

And I’d have to be really careful - there would be a lot of dangerous animals out now in the evening. But spending more than half of my conscious time in the forest gave me quite a lot of experience. I was sure nothing was going to happen.

In the fading sunlight you could see decently under the crowns of the trees, but soon enough it’d be too dark to see my own hands. It wouldn’t be a problem spotting wildlife considering their glowing eyes, but they’d have an easy time spotting me too, so that was one of the reasons to stay quiet. I was used to walking around in the forest in the dark, so I had a route where I’d be relatively predator-safe.

Just past my house was a big, pale oak, stripped of its bark. It was hollow and crooked, so when the wind passed by, it made a loud, continuous whistling noise. Past the whistling oak, there was a healthy, normal oak I used to climb. And I did so this time too - I climbed the healthy oak, and from there, I could continue climbing from tree to tree, naturally avoiding ground-borne predators.

It was in the middle of April, so it was just starting to get warmer outside, and the insects hadn’t really come back yet. That was nice - it would’ve been much worse if I had to climb around in the forest while ants marched around the branches I grabbed and wasps flew around my head. For now, it was just the most perfect time of the year.

I would say that I’m pretty fast, but the time literally flew by as I swung from tree to tree in a flow. I was having a really great time, so I didn’t even notice the shadows growing longer and pushing the sunlight out of view.

There were a few, barely visible rays of sunlight almost horizontally shining from the treeline far away, but as I got closer to the ravine, more and more light made its way from the ravine through the lush vegetation. When I measured I was roughly twenty meters away from the ravine, the forest opened up to reveal a small glade.

It was partially filled with fresh green grass, thinning out into flat, dirty rock closer to the ravine’s edge. But the building on the other side was nowhere in sight - instead was another, different one.

To my left, almost halfway into the shrubbery and trees, was an intact abandoned cabin. It was pretty big, and from the look of it, it seemed to have been built pretty recently. But why was it there?

Wonder if someone lives there, I thought to myself, before approaching the building and barging down the door.

☙•❧

Okay, I didn’t really barge down the door, but I should’ve been a lot more quiet. Maybe it wasn’t so smart to break into an abandoned house during nighttime, but I couldn’t see any light inside it, and it was safer to be inside than outside now - and it doesn’t hurt to be concerned about safety. Plus, I could always talk to humans if there were any in here, but I would just get mauled by a bear or something if I stayed out. And I simply wanted to check the place out. So I was pretty relieved when I saw that there was no one inside from what I could see from the door. I closed it behind me - quietly this time - and examined the place.

The room I was standing in seemed to be a mixup between a living room and a kitchen, with a long kitchen island shielding off part of the kitchen. There wasn’t much furniture, just a worn old couch, a coffee table, a firepit - that I really hoped wasn’t clogged - and a couple armchairs in the corners. A rugged mat covered about half of the floor in the living room, and a dusty, dusty chandelier barely clung to the ceiling.

The kitchen wasn’t much better: there was a gas-driven stove, and miraculously enough an oven, a few pantries, cupboards, a sink and a kitchen island between the sink and stove. The stove seemed to work, I just had to bring gas and an icebox, then I could comfortably spend a few nights here.

I decided to quickly check the fireplace; and it was clogged with clumps of thicket. That was relieving, it’d be easier to remove than a bird nest or chimney creosote. I remembered when that’d happened to a friend of my dad’s - their chimney had been clogged by the tar-like stuff, and it’d almost caused a house fire. My dad had luckily been close by and noticed the smoke through a window, so he saved them from that. He worked as a firefighter, so he knew exactly how to work through it.

But there was still a lot of work to do - that I saw when I discovered a door in the living room, leading to a bedroom and a bathroom.

I didn’t spend much time in the bathroom, understandably. But in the bedroom, there was much to discover.

The double bed was torn up and dirty, as was the floor, the walls and surprisingly, the roof. There were a couple wardrobes, a shabby dresser, a moldy rug that had almost melted into the floor, and a bedside table that was barely intact.

I’ll visit here again, maybe with Rick, I thought to myself. I don’t have time to clean today, though. I checked the wardrobes and the dresser cautiously, but there was nothing inside except for a few blown-in leaves and a scared mouse. Had to check where it came from later on.

But I found something exceptionally weird when I opened the bedside table. The first table drawer held an old book, but it was covered in dried mud so I could hardly see the title, and the text inside was too small. The second drawer was filled with papers in plastic pockets, and they looked brand new. I wasn’t interested in them, so I let them be for the moment. They all looked like office files anyways. But the weirdest thing was in the third drawer.

There, under a layer of leaves and dry dirt, was a pretty wicked thing looking like a murder-weapon.

☙•❧

It was a shining steel device, unlike anything I’d ever seen before. And I often visited the science lab at EverNought High. It was roughly the size of my arm, maybe a bit bigger, and it looked like a syringe mixed with a miniature robotic arm holding a couple pairs of pliers.

‘Uh… the hell is this?’ I mumbled out loud, examining the device closely. It didn’t have any buttons, or levers, so I wasn’t sure how it worked. It was made up of two sections, one short arm with the pliers sitting on top and the syringe kind of sitting in the middle top between the pliers, and then another arm below it with some kind of attachment system on the bottom. I guess it was made to connect some other kind of instrument.

‘I… don’t think I want to get too deep down investigating this thing’, I mumbled. It’s never too great to do so. So I carefully laid the device back in the bottom drawer, closed it, and began looking through the papers in the drawer above. Man, those were unsettling.

Most of them seemed to be documents over different “Subjects”, as the texts described them, sorted by numbers and occasionally letters. Some of them were files over things like “sector four”, other sectors, weird tools and instruments.

But there was something that really caught my attention. A file regarding something called Subject A.

There was no picture, but the descriptions were enough to illuminate an image in my head.

In the text, the subject was described as a bear-sized creature, looking like a wolf with furious, feral eyes. It was made out of an unknown substance beneath the fur and didn’t seem to have any bones, apart from its teeth.

The image painting itself in my head didn’t look very friendly. But why in the world would this be in an abandoned house in the middle of the forest? It had to be fake, right? Some kind of prank?

With shaking hands, I put the documents back down in the drawer, and brought my phone up from my pocket. I opened the bottom drawer again and took a photo of the device. After that, I called Dad.

He answered quickly with a bright ‘Hello, Jay!’, and a familiar sizzling in the background.

‘H-hey’, I stammered.

‘Hey, you sound kinda shook. Has something happened?’ Dad asked, now in a concerned tone.

‘No, not really. But do you think you can drive Boomer over to the ravine and pick me up?’ I asked, putting down the papers in the drawer with one hand.

‘Yeah, sure, buddy! Where around the ravine?’ I tried to describe where I was, including the abandoned cabin, but it was hard when I was shaking so much. I hadn’t found anything this messed up in a long time. Dad tried to console me, telling me to keep calm as he got the ATV going.

‘You said you’re inside an abandoned cabin, right? I think I’ve seen it before. Stay inside, I’ll be there as soon as possible’, he assured me, before ending the call.

I took a deep breath. Only a few minutes. Then I’d be back to safety. Away from this messed up house.

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